Uitvlugt factory loses 200 hours of work as a result of equipment failure

Mechanical failures at the Uitvlugt factory has aggregated to some 204 hours lost for the first crop, which is equivalent to more than a week and a half of operations.
The Guyana Agriculture Workers Union (GAWU) on Tuesday stated that the estate, which is now in the fifth week of its seven-week first crop, announced that their sugar production is standing at 3559 tonnes.

According to the Guyana Sugar Corporation’s (GuySuCo) crop schedule, the estate by now ought to have produced 4837 tonnes of sugar. It was also revealed that the estate, in all likelihood, will not realise its targeted production in the scheduled crop weeks.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday GAWU stated that the general sugar production for the industry as at last weekend stood at 10,819 tonnes.
“Albion had produced 3642 tonnes of sugar as against 5670 tonnes targeted. At Blairmont, sugar production was 3638 tonnes of sugar as against 4662 tonnes targeted. Aggregately, the industry’s production, last weekend, was in deficit by 4330 tonnes sugar,” GAWU said in a press statement. The Union noted that it did warn a few weeks ago that, from information received, there was not much work done to really improve the reliability of the factories. “At a subsequent engagement, the Corporation sought to express critical views regarding what the Union had said, though it could not have offered, from our perspective, any credible rationale for its position,” the statement noted.
In all efforts to push for results, GAWU said nothing was done to improve the situation.
“It appears, all that we heard, and what was sought to be denied by the Corporation, is being demonstrated. We cannot help but feel there is hardly anything really done to address what clearly, in our view, is a situation growing more serious by the day. We ask where is the industry heading?”, they posited.
In January, GuySuCo confirmed that sugar production for 2019 had fallen below 100,000 tonnes and it acknowledged that there had been “major” mechanical failures at the Albion and Uitvlugt factories.
The sugar union had warned several times in 2019 about the likely low sugar output and had also cited mechanical failures at factories as a major issue. The last time sugar production fell below 100,000 tonnes was in 1926.